Re: Version 0.9y-1 feedback

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Morning,

Running very good, latest version.

1 thing doh,  every album the last track stops at 1 or 2 min before ending. (But could also be last 10 sec)

Roy

[Eric]

Hi,
when I trie to change volume, the following message is produced:
Change to/from -0dB is not allowed when Engine#3 is running.
Please help.
Eric

[Calibrator]

Lengthy "twitter" ahead ... of value only to Peter I expect.

Thought I would take notes during the day while running 0.9y-1c.

Just to reiterate my pertinent hardware:
ASUS P5Q3 m/board
E8500 CPU (3.16 GHZ OOB ) overclocked to 3.82 GHz on standard voltages.
2 x 2GB sticks Corsair 1333MHz CAS 9 Ram
ESI Juli@ using SPDIF to external processor ( Integra DHC 9.9 ). Driver version 1.05 (32bit)
Gigabyte HD4850 ( 512MB ) video card
VISTA Ultimate - no service packs installed
Primary drive is Seagate 1.5TB, partitioned as follows:
   1 x 30GB Primary ( Primarily for Video playback )
   1 x 30GB Primary ( Spare for future use and testing )
   1 x 30GB Primary ( Music playback - XXHE installed on this and is very spartan )
   1 x 30GB First Logical ( XX Galleries exclusively )
   1 x 1277GB Second logical ( Adhoc Data storage )
Music storage drives consist of 3 x 1.5TG Seagates
Using AHCI for SATA operation

=================================================================================================

Session 1: Ahmad Jamal ~ It's Magic

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
NO covert boxes ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

As expected, no covertart showed after GUI disappeared. Album played from start to finish and then brought the GUI back again as expected. I noticed a few ( maybe 3 ) brief pauses during play and were well spaced apart.

Closed XXHE down and moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 2: Acoustic Alchemy ~ The Beautiful Game

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

After I pressed PLAY, track 2 in the list onwards were progressively highlighted in blue and just before the end track was highlighted the GUI disappeared and I was presented with the Coverart and album back as it was available.

No sound was forthcoming, and no progress timer. The OSD was not showing either, apart from a slither of the lower text showing just above where the task bar would appear.

I ALT-X'd to bring back the GUI to see what was happening. The progress slider was well advanced into the track. I closed the GUI down again. I noticed the box area where the track timer normally appears ( the red text ) was just a white box. The OSD text was missing completely (ie. the slither of text at the bottom had been cleared). I waited till what I thought should been the end of the track and ALT-X'd again.

The playlist was showing the first track highlighted in blue and the progress bar was at the extreme left.

Clicked on the close button and was jumped back to the coverart.

Alt-X'd again and this time clicked on the stop button.

Closed XXHE down and moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 3: Acoustic Alchemy ~ The Beautiful Game

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all unticked this time <--------------------------
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

After I pressed PLAY, track 2 in the list onwards were progressively highlighted in blue and just before the end track was highlighted the GUI disappeared and I was presented with the Coverart and album back as it was available.

Taskbar showing as expected and no icons showing

Album started playback

Played from start to finish with no apparent pauses ( although the nature of this album makes it a little harder to notice that ). At completion of album the GUI popped up, showing track 1 highlighted in blue as expected.

Before closing XXHE down and starting another session I thought I might now go and tick the STOP SERVICES button and see what happens. The XXDat00**.dao and UnicodeTrack00**.wav files are still present in main XXHE folder at this stage.

Clicked PLAY. The playlist tracks were highlighted much quicker this time as expected, and then the GUI disappeared and I was presented with coverart, and then ...

Album started playback from beginning. No runtime timer as expected and taskbar has disappeared. Played first track fine and went to second smoothly. Will let it continue to completion.

Played to completion and brought GUI back up as expected.

Ticked "Running Time OSD" , then clicked PLAY. <-------------------------------------

GUI disappeared, coverart appeared, runtime appeared, and sound happened ! Will let it run till second track then stop. ( There are just so many times I can listen to the same album over and over again .. haha ). Track 2 kicked off OK ... did ALT-X to bring back GUI.

Clicked STOP. Ticked "OSD Text", highlighted track on in playlist, pressed PLAY <-------------------

GUI disappeared, coverart appeared, runtime appeared, OSD test appeared and sound happened. Will let it run till second track then stop. Track 2 kicked off OK ... did ALT-X to bring back GUI.

Clicked STOP, clicked CLEAR, shut down XXHE and moved logfiles to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 4: Al Stewart ~ Year Of The Cat

Unattended
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB

The above is the same as start of session 2.

Clicked PLAY, coverart, OSD text, then running time appeared ( in that order I think .. it wasn't instantaneous for all three components). Sound happened, however I think I detected a very slight pause ( or perhaps a very brief silence ) right at the start of playback. Can't be 100% sure though. First track played fine, went to second track OK. ALT-X'd to bring GUI back up. Clicked STOP. OSD text disappeared as expected. Cleared playlist, shutdown XXHE, and moved logs to separate folder.

Rebooted

=================================================================================================

Session 5: Al Stewart ~ Year Of The Cat

Unattended
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB

Same scenario as above ( session 4 ), and I did this time detect a slight  ( missing ) gap at the start of playback. Track 2 started ok, so ALT-X'd to bring GUI back. Clicked STOP. Clicked CLEAR. Moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 6: Acoustic Alchemy ~ The Beautiful Game

Thought I would try this scenario again as it failed earlier on in similar(ish) circumstances. Perhaps it is the album length ?

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

It all worked fine this time .. aaarrgh ! ( I'm also beginning to hate that first track .. hehe ). Will play till second track and see what happens.

Second track kicked off OK , so ALT-X'd to bring GUI back. clicked STOP , then cleared tracks, then shut down XXHE and moved logs to separate folder.

Might try some hi-res albums shortly ... time for lunch first though

=================================================================================================

Session 7 ~ Donald Fagen ~ Morph The Cat @ 24bit/96KHz

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

All working fine

Played through till end without any aparent errors.

Cleared playlist and queued up:

David Sanborn ~ Time Again @ 24bit/96Khz

Started playing fine

Played through till end without any aparent errors.

Cleared playlist and queued up:

Grover Washington Jr ~ Winelight @ 24bit/192KHz

Clicked PLAY, it switched to showing coverart of previous album and was immediately replaced by coverart from 'Winelight', the OSD text was showing, BUT NO runtime OSD and NO sound. Let it sit for a minute or so and ALT-X'd to get back to GUI where it showed the progress slider well advanced along. Clicked STOP, shutdown XXHE without clearing playlist and moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 8:

Started XXHE again, and simply clicked on PLAY. Same scenario as above .. NO sound.

ALT-X'd to get to GUI, progress slider had advanced along, clicked STOP. Closed XXHE, moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================


Time to call it quits for a while. Will continue later today and over the weekend keeping logging running in the background. Hopefully these will be of some assistance in figuring out what's going on.

For my next listening sessions I might try a different PROC scheme. I've been using scheme-1 for months and months now without any issues. Perhaps these new versions warrant a change to scheme-3 to share the load. Is anyone else running scheme-1 WITHOUT any problems with version Y ??

All log files are in separate "sessions' folder in the attached zip file.

Cheers and beers,

Russ

[PeterSt]

Morning,

Running very good, latest version.

1 thing doh,  every album the last track stops at 1 or 2 min before ending. (But could also be last 10 sec)

Roy

Inspiration

This is something known (to some) and I never could find it 6a skips the last piece of the last song in the playlist). And since so many things have been rewritten in this area, I kind of hoped it was away. So it is not. But :

Somehow suddenly a theoretical bug on this sprung to my mind. And, just checked it, and it is true. I never could mimic this myself so I can't check whether the solution helps, but I'm sure LydMekk can make some arrangements with Diana Krall and check. So, should be solved in the next version (0.9-y1a or 0.9y-2).

[SeVeReD]

Hi,
when I trie to change volume, the following message is produced:
Change to/from -0dB is not allowed when Engine#3 is running.
Please help.
Eric

Hi Eric,
That's normal for XXHE.  For some reason when you've been using the volume you can't go to 0db or you get bad distortion; Peter had to put the warning there and keep it from going to 0db.  I have a xover that has four vol controls, it used to act like a preamp (had to adjust all 4 volume controls ack) so I love having the one vol on XXHE.  I've adjusted my xover so that XXHE vol is normally riding at ~-13.5 ... so far I've never found a recording that had to go all the way to 0db.  If you have a recording/system that needs to ride at 0 db some times, I guess you'd need to stop the song, set vol to 0db, and then hit play.  Hope you can make yours work.

[PeterSt]

Hi,
when I trie to change volume, the following message is produced:
Change to/from -0dB is not allowed when Engine#3 is running.
Please help.
Eric

Hi Eric. This is intentional and was needed especially for Russ here, who first spoiled his coffee at waking up and pressing wrong buttons, but next started to spoil cognaq at night time at falling asleep on his remote. That did it.

... or something like that.

More serious, I can't recall quickly why this was solved like this (Russ will know), but I must say that in the mean time it disturbs me myself. So, I will look it up and see whether there's a better solution for whatever it was.

Peter

[PeterSt]

That's normal for XXHE.  For some reason when you've been using the volume you can't go to 0db or you get bad distortion; Peter had to put the warning there and keep it from going to 0db.

Oh, that's quick (thanks Dave). So, after a bit of cross posting I already know again. So yes, that was the reason. However, this is exactly what (coincidentally) has changed now, since de audio engine plays all from the same source. Thus, earlier there was a difference betwen "not attenuated" and "attenuated", but this difference has vanished. And so, we can just can rid of this quirk now. Will be in the next version.

Russ is good at testing it.

[Eric]

Peter,
Thanks for the morningjoke!
Normally I use my ML32 preamp, so no hurry for me.

Another behaviour in 0.9y-1c strikes me as odd.

After playing a playlist through 0.9x-7, I press Stop, Clear, Off. When I bring up XXHE again, no artwork from the previous session is shown anymore. IMHO this is good behaviour.

When I perform the same sequence in 0.9y-1c, it still shows artwork from the previous session. The way to get a clean screen is to use Delete before Off.
I do not like this change, is it my installation problem (now -for testing purposes- having both 0.9x-7 and 0.9y-1c on my desktop, what about AHK???), or is this change intentional?
Cheers,
Eric.

[Calibrator]

Hi,
when I trie to change volume, the following message is produced:
Change to/from -0dB is not allowed when Engine#3 is running.
Please help.
Eric

Hi Eric. This is intentional and was needed especially for Russ here, who first spoiled his coffee at waking up and pressing wrong buttons, but next started to spoil cognaq at night time at falling asleep on his remote. That did it.

I remember that .. haha

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=787.0

I had to go search for it .. the 'ol memory had forgotten about it.

Russ

[PeterSt]

Wow Russ, what a work you put into this.

Session 1

As expected, no covertart showed after GUI disappeared. Album played from start to finish and then brought the GUI back again as expected. I noticed a few ( maybe 3 ) brief pauses during play and were well spaced apart.

This is something I know from my own Juli@, and as expected per the Release Notes (at least I recall saying something about this). Btw, I don't blame the Juli@, but I learned it is prone to this. Similar is the heavy conversion, when it ticks abd crackles away. Very good for vinyl simulation, but not much intentional. Anyway ...
Yeah I know, and I must see how to tweak things for the better. Keep in mind that the priority settings play a large role here (you have nothing nothing now). Also, it is exactly this where the OS priority bug (see earlier post in this topic) comes into play. I will try something for the next version (or maybe the one after that).
Notice I have it no different. Maybe 2 oir three times during an album silence of a small second, and it happens during the loading of the next track. But, not with my Firewire connection ... ()

Session 2

No sound was forthcoming, and no progress timer. The OSD was not showing either, apart from a slither of the lower text showing just above where the task bar would appear.

This must -somehow- be the situation I encountered myself at tweaking the code for "Xopy to XX-Drive", and which I reverted. But, this was one part of it only, and I guess there is more that can behave the same.
I will try to play with just your settings and file type, and I guess I can let it happen just the same. The log files show nothing.
In case I can't copy this, how much memory does XXEngine3.exe show in this situation ? It should be a few hundred MB and not a few only (which I saw in my case).

Session 3

Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all unticked this time <--------------------------
Album started playback

So something here must make the difference and the only thing which can really influence the sound producing code, is the Stop Services (not used here). Hmm ... I think I'm getting a hunch here.
With the OSD Time you may have noticed that sometimes the background of it is grabbed from the original desktop wallpaper (at a clean screen) which is something which is difficult to get under my control (this is about timing and the OSD needing to wait until everything has vanished from the screen, that being arranged for the ChangeWP process which really is a stand alone thing. So, this all works with interrupts and possibly things are waiting for eachother because of a situation not thought of (like the OSD background really should be black and which persistently keeps on *not* happening at certain file types).
Sorry for the blahblah, it is merely for myself.

Session 4 / Session 5

Same scenario as above ( session 4 ), and I did this time detect a slight  ( missing ) gap at the start of playback.

This too is the Juli@ story (above), but of course before this was okay. In this case it will be the Wallpaper showing which creates a too heavy load on the system BUT combined with the priority bug (note that the before story about this is about track load, which is not in order here). So, what somehow happens is that ChangeWP (and its controlling thread) receive a low priority, but the playback threads "inherits" that. So, this doesn't help much. As how it was before, ChangeWP was called from the thread loading the tracks, when things worked out differently. BUT ... as I just realize ... there is a difference between the old and new situation and this is about the necessary tweaking of the Processor Schemes in such a situation. And that does not happen here. Aha ...

Session 6

Thought I would try this scenario again as it failed earlier on in similar(ish) circumstances. Perhaps it is the album length ?

[...]

It all worked fine this time .. aaarrgh !

Well, I guess this by now shows what an inmense amount of time it takes to
- coincidentally run into a problem;
- analyse whatever could be the difference, *if* you started recording everything in the first place. Oterwise you're out of luck anyway;
- find the cause;
- solve the problem (like the Copy to XX-Drive didn't work);
- Re-do the whole lot (with the main question "what ?").

Russ, your efforts on this are priceless. I mean it.
I took the two XX log files concerned (the X3 from Session 2 just shows all is okay, but which is up to the track load only -> no more logging is in the code), and found them both the same for relevant data, except for these two parts (which is about the prepapation of the first track) (again, merely for myself registered here) :

Session 2
09:41:00.6260402 : TimeStart : 0
09:41:00.6260402 : Bytes per second : 176400
09:41:00.6260402 : TimeLength : 70775208
09:41:00.6260402 : A
09:41:00.6260402 : B
09:41:00.6260402 : C
09:41:00.6260402 : G
09:41:00.6260402 : M
09:41:00.6260402 : N
09:41:00.6260402 : O
09:41:00.6260402 : P
09:41:00.6260402 : Q
09:41:00.6260402 : V
09:41:00.6260402 : W
09:41:00.6260402 : X
09:41:00.6260402 : Wait for Converson threads to report back
09:41:00.6572402 : Conversion start for processor 1
09:41:00.6572402 : FLAC decoding start for processor 1 Output Name +++++++ "UnicodeTrack0001.wav"
09:41:00.6884402 : X
09:41:00.6884402 : Wait for Converson threads to report back

Session 6
13:08:38.2400347 : TimeStart : 0
13:08:38.2400347 : Bytes per second : 176400
13:08:38.2400347 : TimeLength : 70775208
13:08:38.2400347 : A
13:08:38.2400347 : B
13:08:38.2400347 : C
13:08:38.2400347 : G
13:08:38.2400347 : M
13:08:38.2400347 : Conversion start for processor 1
13:08:38.2400347 : N
13:08:38.2400347 : FLAC decoding start for processor 1 Output Name +++++++ "UnicodeTrack0001.wav"
13:08:38.2400347 : O
13:08:38.2400347 : P
13:08:38.2400347 : Q
13:08:38.2400347 : V
13:08:38.2400347 : W
13:08:38.2400347 : X
13:08:38.2400347 : Wait for Converson threads to report back

Now, the A, B, C (u/i Y) log lines reside in one thread, and everything else is in another.
I didn't look at the real consequences in the program (there shouldn't be), but at least this is the difference. Compared to Session7 / Session 8 (where A-Y show normal), this is'nt doing it.

Session 7

Clicked PLAY, it switched to showing coverart of previous album and was immediately replaced by coverart from 'Winelight'

Unless it is an OS quirk, this might be of relevance ...

Session 8

BUT NO runtime OSD and NO sound

Athough this doesn't seem to present additional information, in the end it does because it might be a compareable situation with Session 2 (which is about another album). Besides that, I have that Grover Washington myself.


CONCLUSION

Russ is crazy.

[PeterSt]

Another behaviour in 0.9y-1c strikes me as odd.

After playing a playlist through 0.9x-7, I press Stop, Clear, Off. When I bring up XXHE again, no artwork from the previous session is shown anymore. IMHO this is good behaviour.

When I perform the same sequence in 0.9y-1c, it still shows artwork from the previous session. The way to get a clean screen is to use Delete before Off.
I do not like this change, is it my installation problem (now -for testing purposes- having both 0.9x-7 and 0.9y-1c on my desktop, what about AHK???), or is this change intentional?

Eric - Thanks. It is very good that you mention this, because I observed similar (hehe) - wasn't sure it always was so, but it disturbs me more and more.
This is (even) merely about not being able to get rid of some tracks if you don't start playback (you can try it). So, since I am now sure this has changed (for no aparent reason), I will try to get it back to normal again.

Peter

[Calibrator]

CONCLUSION

Russ is crazy.

haha .. I've be called that on numerous occassions. I love a good mystery and the hunt to get at the truth.

I try and put myself into your shoes and try and figure out what you need to "see" as you read the logfiles. Trouble shooting from afar must be one of the hardest PC tasks imagineable and one becomes reliant on the party at the other end who has the problem to be your "eyes". It isn't easy and what appears "bleedin' obvious" to you or I sitting in front of our own screen, can lead to feeling of frustration and helplessness when we can't see firsthand what is going on remotely.

I shall endeavour to keep a check on engine3's memory allocation also in future sessions.

While I'm thinking about it, yesterday while trialling a new version ( and I can't be certain which of the 'y' ones it was ), my screen had been powered down due to timeout in my powersaving settings (normally 5 minutes), and when I moved the mouse to wake the screen up, the album I was listening to stopped dead in it's tracks. I have never had that happen before. Needless to say I disabled the screen powerdown mode thereafter. I have had the screensaver disabled all along and had relied on the powerdown function to turn off the monitor. Perhaps a coincidence or yet another example of services interferring with playback.

It's beer o'clock here .... time for a movie for a change

Cheers,

Russ

[PeterSt]

I sincerely think that the issue with the screen saver just is a coincidence and will never happen again.

Never say never, and skip James Bond. These days he refuses to tell who he is, and stopped the Martini's as well. Although, I heard someone say that he had one indeed in the last episode, which is hard to tell for me because I usually fall asleep during movies not containing one Aston Martin at least.

Blahblahblah Me.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

My complete Dream Theater collection wont play from within the normal folder.

Outside the folder just playing normal !?
Come back on this

Now PLAYING VERY LOUD Awake - 11 - Space-Dye Vest 


Grtz

[AUDIODIDAKT]

When playing an album Attented,

all tracks remain in the xx folder (doesn't gets deleted after a track)
So, now i have like 9 unicode tracks in the xx folder, is this normal behavior?

Thinking about it, maybe its better this way, saves time deleting between every song,
and "Prev" would become easier. (Faster I mean)

Right??

But I guess this is about that cover subject.